IIRC, Blockbuster still has "two day rentals" for all their new releases -- which comes to 36 hours only if you rent it early in the day and return it late the next night.

And back when video rentals were new and Blockbuster was just a gleam in some venture capitalist's eye, every movie was a one-night rental that had to be back in by the next day or you'd get socked with a second $3 rental charge -- not the one-week grace period Blockbuster offers today.

Give it a couple of years, and Apple and the movie studios will both be relaxing that 24-hour window a bit. Considering that a year a go they weren't offering the rentals at all, to anyone, under any circumstances, I think it's a darned good start.

to testudo, and often forces him to buy apple products and services that he doesn't want, or Jobs will trash-talk him at the next Association meeting. Testudo has "out of spec" colors on his front door, and Jobs knows it, and has been lording it over testudo for years. I'd be grumpy too!

Frankly this makes it an unusable feature for me.

I see no reason why this could not be extended to 3 days. As the saying goes "$hit happens." I might plan to watch the movie when I order it but life has a funny way of making your plans change.

It is a serious concession to the studios by Apple that will result in far less adoption and revenue for Apple.

Getting all testy. What's the matter kid, running low on meds?

You really need to deal with your feelings of inadequacy concerning Steve Jobs, one of these days.

It's funny to see little lord fauntleroy pretending to wield his armchair CEO wisdom...

"Apple has corrected an issue..."

In pre-sanitized (i.e. correct) English, an 'issue' is either "discussed" or "read" (i.e. an issue of a magazine). An 'issue' cannot be 'corrected'. Rather it is a 'problem' that can be corrected. This neo-sanitization of the English language in order to sound more important is getting way too sickening...

If you don't like the product and can't follow the simple agreement... don't buy it...

And Testudo.... suck my balls

I think the time interval stinks. It should be at least 27 hours. Most people watch movies around the same time every day. So if you start watching at 8 today, but have to stop watching for some reason, you can't resume around 8 tomorrow.

Other services also have a twenty four hour cap, however, it should be longer for everyone.

It's not that you have only 24 hours from the time you download the movie. The 24 hour clock only starts when you start watching it. You have 30 days to start watching it. But, 24 hours is a bit too restrictive. What if you get the kids to bed at 9:00 and start the movie and then your parents call and talk for an hour? If your window for watching movies is 9-11pm, then you're SOL. All I can imagine is that the studios don't really trust the security built into the system and see this as an extra layer of protection again you renting the movie and giving it to all your friends to watch. Otherwise 24 makes very little sense.

Unfortunately if I want to sit on my fat a** and rent a movie, I have 24 hours to watch it. With Comcast, it's 24 hours from when you bought it. X-box and Apple TV 24 hours from when you start watching it. Seems reasonable to me, I do wish it was 30 hours as suggested by a few above.

I would have appreciated 48 hours. I work 13 hour shifts, when I go home I may fall asleep watching it. 24 hours later I may not be able to watch the rest of it.

The whole point is not that other service have the same time limit, it is that the studios could make a lot more money if they did two simple things. 1. Give a much longer time limit to watch a rented film. 2. Allow you to Apply a rental toward a purchase. These both would be a boon in revenue, but the studios are so short-sighted they can't see past their next 3.99 rental fee. Hopefully this bread of executive will soon be extinct, like their Music Label counterparts.

As for physical rentals, there is a good reason to limit them - you need the DVD back to rent it again.

The only reason to limit rental time of a download is to try to get multiple rental fees from the same person. So we get 5% of the users to re-rent, and loose 80% of the potential market.

I'll never rent a single title from this service, and I am a avid Apple fan (iPod, iPhone, Final Cut Studio, Aperture, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, TV shows and music among my last 12 months purchases).

iTunes movie rentals will fail on this alone.

Just like everything else in life you make time to do an activity. You set priorities and get it done and if you are too busy then buy the DVD. Plus if you get an DVD with a iTunes Digital Copy you can now copy it to your computer allowing you to avoid the rental system completely. Put your cell phone on silent, request a day off, and ignore the doorbell. It's movie time.

LOL@Apple.

You can keep your stinking movie rental. I have Netflix, and I can watch 'em as often & as long as I want, on my TV.

Online movie rentals to watch on my computer can't compare, so the price needs to be a LOT less to even get me interested, and the 24hr limit has got to go, or no sale.

"But I thought Apple could yield their big stick and get what they want."

according to...? where did you get this information? you "thought" this or you have some kind of evidence? you're putting this forth as some kind of argument so let's see some data.

"I don't know, I thought Apple tried to be different, not just one of the many. "

how does being different and NOT getting every major studio on board help apple? "hey, s**** them, we're going to be different!" yeah, there's a game plan.

There is no point arguing with t*******-udo. Forget it and move on, now.

FYI, arguing on the Internet is like competing in the Special Olympics. Even if you win, you're still retarded...

Hopefully you won't get that error when you turn your clock back an hour for daylight savings time.

for that insight mac, but i rather enjoy jousting with the dear boy. he presents himself as the authority here yet leaves these wide openings to walk through. it's irresistable i tell ya, irresistable!

that's a real nice analogy you have there. perhaps some sensitivity training might be in order? just a thought. always striving to better ourselves you know... not a bad thing.

apeintheshell, it seems like you've put movies onto a ridiculous pedestal. People shouldn't have to work their lives around a freaking movie. People have jobs, children, parents, friends or whatever. 24 hours is just shy of being useful for being able to watch the next night. Maybe a person without a life might make it work.

"You set priorities and get it done and if you are too busy then buy the DVD." - apeintheshell

I've heard of a system that handles this far better - Netflix or Blockbuster's subscription service. They actually work pretty well, with no late fees or time bombs to worry about for people with real lives.

Apple probably added something to the server that checks to see that the date code on the movie isn't more than 24 hours from expiring.

Funny that they let it happen in the first place.

You have a life? What are those...